The Excessive Wondering of Shieva Kleinschmidt

March 27, 2007

Wednesday Presentation

Wow, I guess it's been a while since I last posted! For now I've just got a quick announcement for anyone 'round here who might be interested: I'll be giving a grad student talk at Rutgers tomorrow night at 7:30pm in the Philosophy department, in the classroom across from the seminar room. Here's some info about it:

The title: "Time Travel and Motion"

An abstract: The widely accepted version of Russell’s At-At account of motion is the claim that: necessarily, something moves iff it’s at one place at one time, and is at a distinct place at a distinct time. This account has come under attack: spinning disc cases have been used in an attempt to show that the account is too restrictive in some cases. I would like to object to the account as well, though on independent grounds. I find it to be too liberal in some fairly ordinary cases of time travel (though time travel isn't necessary for the cases -- it's really a certain kind of multilocation that generates the problem). If the cases I suggest are possible, then the At-At account is false. And even if my cases are merely conceptually possible, the At-At account cannot be accepted as an analysis of motion. (I'll also talk for a little bit about some intuitive responses to spinning disc cases, and some further problems that we face in giving an account of motion.)

And if this sounds familiar: I mentioned this paper here last April (though it's changed a bit since I wrote that summary!), and again in September. And it's what I'll be presenting in Chicago in two weeks -- I'm so excited!! (I'm also counting the days 'till the Pacific -- less than one week until I board a flight there . . .)